THE RULE OF V'S

"Knowing which way a river flows is often the

key to being able to label contours correctly!
Look at what happens to the contour lines in this
picture when they cross a river! "

"They bend to form kind of a brown "V" shape!

An upsidedown "V" in this case!"

"You can see the "V"s on the contour map too! "

"And the "V"s point upstream! "

"By the way, Lou! Make sure not to confuse

the "V"s the contours make (the brown "V"s)
with the "V"s made by streams where they
join (the blue "V"s)! It's the brown "V"s we
want! Here, the streams flow towards the
south!

"The "V"s can be short or long,

sharp or blunt, but they always
point in the upstream direction!
And the river flows the other way!"
 "So here we can see that
where the D contour crosses
the river it forms a "V"
(shown in green) that points
west! That means west is
upstream! And the river flows
away from the west towards
the east!"
"And in that case, the higher
area that the D contour wraps
around and encloses must be
to the west, not the east! So,
the D contour lies outside the
700 foot contours! It must be
the next lower contour! It
must be the 600 foot contour!"

"Excellent, Louis! Let's see if the idea has really stuck in the old beano! How about a
problem, Louis? Go do the quiz!"

   LINK TO THE QUIZ

GO BACK

© 2000
David J. Leveson